Convergence
by skywalker05
Summary: AU. Challenge: "Luke is turned to the dark side by someone other than the Emperor or Vader. Vader wants to ally with his son, but Luke's loyalties are to his new master."
1. Chapter 1

_Fanfic challenge from author Marriella-The Bullet- as quoted and sometimes paraphrased here:_

_**The Sith Challenge**_

_Luke gets turned to the Dark Side by someone other than the Emperor or Darth Vader, and now Vader wants [to get his son, but his son's loyalties are to his other master._

_**Time Frame: **__Luke can be anywhere from fifteen years old to seventeen when this takes place. Apparently, before ANH._

_**Type:**__...[no limit on whether Luke stays on the Dark Side or not..._

_**Notes: **__I don't want _anyone _out of character..._

**Convergence: Prologue**

_Darth Sidious did not save me out of loyalty, comraderie, or any sort of love. He wished to test his new machines. _

_One could have seen it if they looked. Always he strove in the seemingly incongruous medical field for better droids, better medicines. Bacta, bota, raw alazhi. After me, the signs increased. He was waiting to rescue his successor._

_Each life he saved he left to rot. The droid general? Bait. The Padawan? Droid..._

_The Zabrak? Revenge. Patience and revenge._

_Graduated ministrations replaced my entrails with plastic and new coils. I can move still, though differently. There is a ring of twisted flesh above my hips, and some of the skin has grown in tan. This exterior though is a palty insignficance._

_He thought I would not move alone, and for long years he was right._

**chapter I**

_"If a tyrant or ruler, his search for the father will lead to the invisible unknown from which he will return as a lawgiver. If a world-redeemer, he will learn that he and the father are one."_

Joseph Campbell, _The Hero With One Thousand Faces_

Luke Skywalker, almost sixteen years old, saw the pale dust on the horizon and thought the worst. Of course it would be his friends on their skyhoppers,come to gloat about having gotten their road licenses while Luke's aunt and uncle disallowed his own. No matter sometimes; the teens had always flown the skyhoppers in the canyons, a sport requiring much more skill than that needed for navigating traffic in a landspeeder. Fifteen was the legal age, and any teen seen in a town, even tiny, rather pathetic Anchorhead, would come head-to-head with Imperial law if caught driving without permission. Either paperwork or mechanized galavanting were frowned upon by Owen and Beru.

_Farmers' attitiudes, _Luke thought, accusing his relatives of lack of ambition and creativity as he often did. They lived without dreaming either of fighting spaceships or of having a day with friends...

Luke turned the spigot on the vaporator and the water container automatically sealed with a secure popping sound. He picked up the two containers he had gathered on this sweep near the homestead and kicked the treadwell to remind it to move. It rolled along ahead of him singlemindedly, the green and white paint on its chassis and spidery legs chipping and as dull as anything else baked by Tatooine's suns. As dull as Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen's imaginations, and as dull as Luke felt his would be if he did not get away from this region soon.

The dust from the distant craft faded away from the horizon and Luke's thoughts as he trudged back to the homestead.

The treadwell twitched, sensors mistakenly tracking the sandflies buzzing under the open-roofed homestead, as Luke linked his water containers to the cistern. The reservoir, the unofficial center and hearth of the underground house, was topped with its own large vaporators. Luke knew it well, and in his generally peaceful existance nothing had shattered the illusion of home as safety, whether from Tusken Raiders or from teenage drama. He had a definite sense of unease, though, as the droid whined off after a noisy fly. Owen and Beru were around somewhere. The air, though, felt disjointed, dead...

Clattering came from the kitchen. Luke finished siphoning the water and walked to his right and down the slope toward the oval-roofed kitchen. _Just to check on Beru. Just to be sure. _

But it had been Owen in the kitchen, and suddenly nothing was sure. Not the species of the man in the kitchen, not the pallor of Owen's face, not Luke's frozen stare which, certain, tried to prod his stunned brain into running for the rifle.


	2. Chapter 2

_Thanks a lot to the reviewers __**Vila Restal, Treenahasthaal, happyIbanez423, **__and __**Marriella. **This chapter edited due to **Balance in the Dark.**_

**chapter II**

"The other is dead also," said the stranger, and Luke ran. He hurried into the garage, feet pounding on the black metal gangway. The blaster rifle kept for Sand People hung by the garage door; Luke snatched it up. No thoughts marred his resolve as he cocked the gun to 'kill'. No moisture farmer took lightly to intrusion, because surely it was about water, the most precious substance in the galaxy.

The courtyard looked empty when he entered it. Then the intruder stepped, hideously surprising in the familiar space, out of a stairwell. The stranger looked passably like a male human, but for the pattern of red and black color covering his head, the short horns, and the orange sunset-colored eyes. He wore a loose, black robe despite the climate. He raised a cylindrical, silver device.

Luke shot him point-blank, but an electronic snapping sound assaulted his ears after the close laser fire and a red sword-blade emanating from the silver device caught the blaster bolt and ricocheted it into a packed-sand wall. The stranger cartwheeled into the courtyard, weapon always pointed at Luke, who stood watching and gritted his teeth as he set up for another shot.

"Your father's pace, I see."

Luke's thoughts again stalled, then crystallized into one. His voice cracked, but he regained it. "You knew my father?"

The stranger jumped forward, farther and faster than Luke would have thought possible. Luke flung up the rifle in defense. The hilt of the laser sword--smell of ions--pressed against its barrel, the blade close to his face. He glared.

The stranger said, "The Force gives me power--and your father's skill in the Force runs in your veins. "

Luke pushed with two hands on the rifle and shoved the stranger away. "He flew a freighter! He didn't have any power--not like yours. Yours is only death!"

Mindless of the truth of young Luke's statement, the Force picked him up and held him in the air. It seemed that hands were at his throat and eyes, squeezing--

The deep voice droned on. "The power of the Sith, and of the Jedi, could be yours. I can teach you." He turned away smoothly, noncommittal yet tempting. Luke struggled in the air.

"Wait! I have heard of this Force. But it's not worth--my aunt and uncle for it. I don't want it if it's this...violence."

The stranger tipped his head like a bird, showing one unsettling eye beside his shoulder. "Your life is less violent?"

Luke thought of the oft-used rifle. Of holos and speeder races. Of the wonder of the laser-sword.

"You're so fond of this place?" The stranger gestured, encompassing the featureless desert, the featureless afternoons.

"I wouldn't murder like you!" _Craziness, _said one part of him, the aching part. _Adventure_, said the other part, the one he had thought just this morning to be so much closer to him. He had always thought the wizards were so blasted _impressive._ And he had nothing left here now...

Serenely the stranger said, "We'll see."

_What's that mean?_

Then Luke was falling, and skidding across the floor until he hit the door to the garage, dust pluming onto his white clothes. The intruder still had his back to him. "You can learn from me to use the power." Pause. "I'll kill you now if you don't."

The stranger turned and prodded Luke purposefully with one of his boots. "My name is Darth Maul." _Associate it with pain. _"I am of the Sith, masters of the dark side of the Force." _Dark. Shade. Cold. _"You have a destiny before you, and it reunites you with your father."

"He's dead."

"He is alive."

Luke sat up, then stood and could not speak. The deaths so close to this--promise--made his heart into a stone, diamond coated in sparking flint. Confusion wracked him, but he could not feel it, and desperation to escape--as always--manifested falsely as determination. "I want to meet him."

"No," Darth Maul said simply, "You don't." And he took Luke by the collar and began steering him toward the homestead's entrance. "We go to my ship. Then your training begins."

"Don't you want to take the water?" Luke grumbled.

"No."


	3. Chapter 3

_Much thanks go to Marriella, because the main plot idea is hers. It is drawing more readers than my average work! Thanks to new readers __**macaws **__and __**PuddleToes **__along with the others of course. __**Vila Restal, **__all the explanation I am going to give about Maul's survival, unless more is adamantly requested, is contained in the Prologue. __**macaws**__, for more dark Luke check out my fic _Jump

III

For those strong in the Force, the body's components regenerate faster and for longer than typical beings'. Despite this, Ben Kenobi felt every rumble and tremor of the speeding swoop bike as an ache in his back. His young driver, Han Solo, mercilessly kept the hovering bike at full throttle from the seat in front of Ben's. The Corellian had said, before sealing the deal ,that it would be hot and uncomfortable on the back of the bike for the ride to Mos Eisley where his starship was docked. Ben had easily accepted the terms with the ride and sworn to never complain.

He would accept any term to catch up to the intense disturbance in the Force whose epicenter was at this very moment moving off planet. He would do even more to have arrived in time, but the Sith had cloaked itself well. Still he could not have divined whether Luke Skywalker's captor was male or female, passive or malicious of intent, alien or human, known or unknown. By that very skill in gathering shadows Ben guessed the abductor to be Darth Sidious, also known as Emperor Palpatine, or someone trained by him. Ben knew that it was not Darth Vader.

Now, even if he could not muster allies and defeat this person, he would seek and fight to the death to get Luke back.

For some reason the Force had not warned him before the event hit. Perhaps the future had not been coursing this way until a single, improbable action compelled it.

No matter. Ben had gone toward the Lars' on foot at first, adamantly determined, trusting in the Force, his lightsaber, some old equipment, and his reputation for his survival. The foremost of those had delivered; he'd met Han Solo coming from Jabba the Hutt's palace on the trail which detoured hovercraft around the Great Mesra Plateau.

"I'd have a speeder," Han Solo had said, "but the place was out of any that actually worked."

Han Solo owned a Corellian freighter and flew paying passengers.

Ben had offered him all of the old Jedi's saved credits and some rare artifacts to ferry him to an so-far-unspecified location.

With luck, the Force, and/or Han's continued acceleration, they would not have to shelter overnight at the hamlets of Bestine or Arthout before continuing to the rescue of Anakin Skywalker's progeny.

**Darth** Maul's spear-shaped starship cruised through space near Tatooine. Luke stared out the viewports, wonder forming a skein over the grief drying to emptiness in his heart. The man in the pilot's seat did not speak.

"That's amazing," Luke said, looking at the stars. He meant the starship engines and controls too, powerful mechanisms which had been untouchable to him before.

He gasped as they traveled into hyperspace and the starscape swirled and stretched, solidifying into a kaleidoscopic wormhole.

Again he tried conversation. "So I am to be a Force wizard, like my father? To hold power over others?" _And perhaps get you back for that thrashing?_

"To be a Sith."

"Yes."

Darth Maul looked over the complex control panel and then stood up. "Follow me."

Luke followed him back to a room larger than any other he had seen on the ship. It was floored like a dueling ring.

From a rack of weights Darth Maul picked up a black sphere slightly larger than a clenched fist. After he pressed triggers on its sides it revealed itself to be a remote security droid, the sort equipped with low-power blaster turrets and the most rudimentary intelligence, all focused toward motion sensing capabilities.

The Sith pushed his inactive weapon into Luke's hands with an air of exasperation. It was heavier than the human expected, balanced perfectly, but fully one half-meter long. "That is a lightsaber," Darth Maul said, sounding monotone and bored. Luke had not yet heard him use another tone. "the weapon of the Sith Lords. And our enemies."

Luke found a high-profile red button and pressed it. The red blade snapped out and hummed. Close up, it radiated no heat but had the smell of the air during a thunderstorm.

"Reach out for _the Force._ Feel it as...energy fields, around every living and nonliving thing, each connected. As waves between the fields. You are going to deflect the blaster shots with the lightsaber."

The last sentence seemed incongruent. Luke had been trying to feel some state he imagined as like the enlightenment B'Omarr monks sought. His eyes went unfocused. The weak blaster bolt, when it came, flashing, burned into Luke's leg. He hopped backwards and yelped. "Hey!"

Silence for a moment. "It is new eyes. See emotion. See the remote. See possibility." Darth Maul looped a fabric blindfold over Luke's head, jerking the human back uncomfortably quickly, and deftly tied it off before pushing blinded, limping Luke back toward the remote. Luke felt himself angrily tense. Even more irritation swamped Luke because he knew how useless it would be to fight back, but he almost turned to punch the Sith before he knew that the remote would fire again.

Down came the lightsaber in what Luke would have called a lucky moment of reaction--_he'd had plenty racing in the canyons_--had he not known the remote's action and, deeper, the trajectory as a predictable function of that action, so clearly that it could be termed sight. He heard the laser bolt bounce off and spear into a wall.

"Just so," said Darth Maul, and Luke heard him walk away before another blasterbolt lanced out and another burst of what was called the Force propelled Luke's clumsy-feeling hands with the lightsaber. The eternal moment enthralled him.


	4. Chapter 4

_Many thanks go to the reviewers and Favorites'ers. Yay, updates! Two, actually, as I think it's been two weeks. to **Durge the Hidden Dragon: **I know that I could have worked with an OC Sith, and I thought about it, but decided against it. Remember that you can do this challenge too. All that is going to be explained about Maul's survival of episode 1 is written in the Prologue. _

IV

In a universe whose motions are dictated by the Force, nothing is a coincidence. There are not always, though, those present with the eyes to see the irony. Princess Leia saw none when an Imperial Star Destroyer happened to put her family's _Tantive IV _through a routine security check. She was far too busy with shepherding the Rebel soldiers who were the actual crew into position to fire at the first stormtroopers to enter and hold them at bay until _Tantive _could blast a hole in the Imperial behemoth's hull. Fifteen-year-old Leia Organa had been forced to grow up fast as the only daughter of a family of politicians on a pacifist planet who hid intense aversion to the Empire. Her parents had taught her well, though. Already she could converse or deal with politicians sincere or corrupt from twenty different species, or fire a blaster. The Rebel troops listened to her firm voice commanding and encouraging, even though this was her first time in a battle aboard ship. She had imagined the _Tantive _as a safe haven. Adrenaline pumped through her. She tried to keep her movements from being twitchy and tight from her fear.

As Leia rushed to the bridge to rendezvous with Captain Antilles about their chances of escape, incendiaries popped and disintegrated a door in _Tantive_'s side. The Rebel troops crouched, tense, and cocked their blasters behind protective balwarks.

Darth Vader caught up with Captain Antilles and Princess Leia in the navigations room. Bail had told Leia that Darth Vader was not a droid but a severely crippled man, and that she should not fear him as did those deceived and cowed by his black armor and supposed Jedi powers. She worked to keep from cringing as Vader entered the room like a battle tank and stopped directly before her.

"Greetings, princess. I have had to _kill _an unusual number of people to get to the _diplomats _on a _consular ship_!" Vader thundered.

Leia could say nothing and kept her expression and stance icy cool. No way could she tell Vader this was a peacetime craft on a peacetime mission which happened to contain armed soldiers in the colors of the Rebel Alliance.

Antilles tried. "This is the princess's private vessel, from Alderaan--"

Vader's thick-gloved hand raised and grabbed the captain under the chin. Leia shrieked and rushed Vader, but when he did not at all acknowledge her movement she stopped, thwarted by a wall of confidence like that she herself had tried to project. Vader tossed Antilles to the ground, where he lay limp. Vader shouted to his stormtrooper guard arrayed at the door. "Tear this ship apart until I have found their plans! Bring me the passengers, I want them alive!" Only after this did he turn to Leia. She knew that he would order her imprisonment. She had broken the laws of the Empire and Alderaan--and had not truly been prepared for the cost of treachery.

**The **remote droid worked Luke until the room smelled of sweat and felt familiar to him, although the shadowed corners were still unexplored and nothing like his abandoned home. How easy it felt now to almost forget the Dune Sea's impacts on his senses. He did not attribute this to mental trauma, because he had new ideas to turn over in his thoughts.

He only noticed the sweat-smell when he stepped out of the training room and into the hallway to tell Darth Maul of his success and to look at the stars, to see if he could turn them backwards in their movements as he felt he could. When the clean corridor's smell struck him he hurried back in to the training room, so that he could continue to appreciate the state of mind he had won from many successes and more failures with the remote.

He stood on the padded floor, arms slightly spread, the back of his neck prickling. he breathed regularly and deeply. The grin of searchers sated by power curled on his incongruously innocent face, and as he closed his eyes the universe explained itself to him.

The aspect of the Force which he could see was the Living, although he did not knowing it as a name or a portion; planets moved, galaxies were orchestrated by the same enervating dark energy which told him when the little droid would shoot its lasers. He wanted to laugh at what he could do with proper application of it, laugh long and loud like an archtypical villain, and it mattered none at all that Darth Maul so obviously surpassed him in mastery of these wonders.

After a few moments of reveling, standing still in the presence of the dark side of the Force, Luke departed that place. He found Darth Maul again in the pilot's seat. "I did it!" Luke said. "I felt the Force--and deflected the lasers, until I could get them to go back into the remote."

"Ask your questions now," said the Sith, with the opposite tone to Luke's enthusiasm.

Luke could not think any questions about the undeniable state of the Force. He wanted to thank Maul for bringing him in to this larger world, but thought first that the predictable response would be silence. Only second did he remember the antagonism he had been saving, bottled up for Beru and Owen's killer. He was reminded of the many questions he had had thought of before the Force had revealed itself to him. Would any of them be useful now?

"Where are we going?"

"There's the navicomputer," said Darth Maul, pointing to a section of console an arm's reach away on his right. Luke hesitantly inspected the screen and controls. Maul did not object or indeed have any reaction at all as the human experimentally touched a button. With the adaptability of the young and technologically experienced Luke found an ETA--two standard weeks--and coordinated. When he matched them to the spacer's web of designations and hyperspace routes on the navicomp's map of the galaxy he saw that their designation was in face between planetary systems. Its name, _Despayre Project_, was marked in bright blue like that of their own ship, the _Infiltrator_. "It's a ship?"

"A space station," said Maul.

"What's there?"

"Your father."

"Really?" Luke gripped the back of the pilot's seat and got a scathing glare in response.

"Next question."

"Uhm, what species are you?"

"Iridonian Zabrak. You want to kill a Zabrak, hit it at the base of the spine. You want to kill a human, hit the temple."

"My father--what's he like?"

"You'll see. Enough talking. Find the unlocked cabin and go to sleep. You will learn more of the dark side tomorrow."


	5. Chapter 5

V

"I have a gift for you," said Emperor Palpatine from behind his desk. He sat and Darth Vader stood in the red-lined office on Imperial Center, or Coruscant. Artwork on pedestals decorated the walls. Behind Vader, a turquoise mustelid nipped a diamond snake. "You must go to the Death Star, from Despayre, to retrieve it."

Vader could sense his master's skillful prescience, analyzing and aligning the future. He did not, though, become excited or anticipate in any way. Cold was Vader's inner landscape, cold his thoughts.

"There is a story to tell you," Palpatine said after a pause.

Vader took a few steps closer, avoiding placing his bulky feet on the concealed sensor pads which could trip Palpatine's more obvious defenses. He and Vader always fought for supremacy, but it was a subtle fight.

"Your wife died after your fight on Mustafar, but not because of your attack," Palpatine croaked.

Vader had not thought of those days in many years. It would kill him, he knew, to imagine himself young and strong. Palpatine's next words cracked some of the ice that had formed over his heart.

"She died in childbirth," the emperor said slowly. "and your son survived."

_And he is coming to the Death Star!_ Certainty asserted itself in Vader. Now the eagerness came. He would meet his son and--Vader tried to clamp down on the flurry of new emotions to completely concentrate on what his master was saying.

"The boy is in the company of an enemy of mine. Discover your son's history and powers. Bring him to me to assure us of his use to the dark side!"

_Less use_, Vader thought, and more surety of his own decisions. If he could take his son. Luke--had she used that name?--under his wing, the dark side would have truly rewarded him. He could excise some of the he half-regret amassed on Mustafar.

As soon as he was able Vader turned on his heel and left for his personal starship, desperate to rendezvous with the Death Star.

**"Guard** _up_! They aren't _clean _out there!" Maul shouted as the two red lightsabers clashed between his and Luke's faces, fields interacting, straining--he freed one hand from the hilt and grabbed for Luke's hair. The human pulled his saber up and stepped back to slim the chance of retaliation on a low line, hands chafing red against his new hastily constructed weapon, in case Maul did not mind losing a hand--

but the Sith's sword swung up and battered that block-turned strike as his hand retracted--

Luke and Maul had resided aboard the _Infiltrator _for almost two weeks. Each day was filled to the brim with training and testing, and Luke went to bed exhausted but exhilarated at what he had learned. Mostly he was taught lightsaber combat; also basic hand-to-hand, quick useful things like pressure points, Sith philosophy, and use of the Force. He could levitate and throw things, foresee movements, choke or trip someone without the use of his physical hands, sense attacks coming. They had also stopped at a planet to supply the ship, and Luke bought himself black sets of clothes. He soon learned not to gawk at the outlandish people--aliens--who occupied what sections of town which were not unlike what Luke knew of Mos Eisley. When Darth Maul wanted Luke to learn a task or behavior the Sith Lord set him to that task and, by trial and error which gave Luke valuable experience, confidence, and damaged nerves, he could with few exceptions puzzle through until he taught himself what to do to succeed.

Now they whirled away from each other into neat basic stances, and, instead of continuing the duel, Darth Maul caused both lightsabers to shut down. "You have improved quickly, especially your Force aptitude."

"Thank you," said Luke.

"This flight will be finished in less than a day." Maul began to walk out.

"Why are we going to this space station, master?"

The Sith turned around and leaned against a bulkhead. His eyes were very wide and strange, staring into Luke's.

"Darth Vader, of the Empire, is a Sith Lord also. He took my place as our master's favorite. I will regain it."

"What about the stormtroopers? Or the Emperor! We'll be arrested."

"What has been called illegal does not concern us. Power is law for Sith, you should know that! No spacecraft can catch or track this ship.

And we will concern ourselves with the emperor afterward." Maul turned and stalked away.

Luke watched him go, thinking what exactly kept him following the orders of the Zabrak. Luke had nearly forgotten his anger or sadness about Owen and Beru or his questions about his father. Hard work had wiped them away. His thirst for adventure, always strong, was tempted by the tales of the Sith, by the chance to meet Darth Vader knowing the source of his rumored power. He itched to unleash his new skills. He was appreciative to Darth Maul and to the dark side as well for expanding his horizons, plucking him out of the rut of Tatooine. He felt that at the side of the Sith was a truer home than the first had ever been.


	6. Chapter 6

VI

"Toward Tralis," said Obi-Wan Kenobi. "Toward Ithor. Those reaches of space," and the old man actually pointed out the viewport.

"Right," said Han Solo from the pilot's seat of the _Millennium Falcon_. He knew the value of spiced-up passengers who paid by the distance covered. 'We'll take the Perlemian." Chewie angled the navicomputer for that oft-used space route.

On their way the Death Star interdicted the _Millennium Falcon_. Amid much cursing and complaining by Han ('It's like a black hole but worse; it's politically affiliated!') they were inexorably pulled in. Obi-Wan sat as still as a statue as the giant craft's walls flattened into horizons and closed around him, lightly touching the two lightsaber hilts at his belt.

**The** disturbance irritated everyone in the room except Princess Leia. Darth Vader's head came up like a bulldog's on a scent, and the stromtroopers flinched inside their plastic exoskeletons when he spoke. "Intruders on the station!" He sensed Kenobi, Luke, the Sith, all converging on this one point in time-space. He stomped out of the interrogation room where the frightening black droid loomed over Leia. His cape sweeping behind him brought the troopers to attention and trotting in his wake.

Leia was left determined to get past the droid.

**The **_Infiltrator _entered the Death Star's cavernous docking bay without a complication. It still had Emperor's clearance. Luke gawked as the thick walls closed behind the ship.

"Be serious," said Darth Maul. "The Empire is pompous, and stormtroopers easily intimidated beings."

They stood at the head of the boarding ramp when the invisible energy field airlocks were secured around the docking bay, Maul's head covered by his cowl and Luke's bare. People bustled in and out of the ship checking that it was no more deadly than what the Emperor allowed. Maul told the deck officer truthfully that they were there to see Vader.

"He is a behemoth," Maul spoke under his breath as he and Luke walked toward the station's labyrinthine corridors. "Slow, but strong in the Force. Surprise him. We will work together." They siphoned bravery and rage from the dark side as they walked. The Force seemed to hang like a fog over this place; Luke was surprised the stromtroopers did not soak it up like a radiation and mutate into Sith. He felt exhilarated, exalted to be here in an epic struggle, finally possessing skills which set him apart from drab people. The defeat of Darth Vader would be the start of an adventurous career in the arenas of the supermen, one beyond his imaginings. Jitters could so easily become strikes with the lightsaber. Ah, to contemplate worthwhile things!

A presence, the awareness of a person empowered with the dark side not unlike Maul was, approached. Then Luke could hear the marching of feet.

"Vader is vile," Maul's growly voice came slower to Luke's ear but the human's vision had tunneled now. "He is your father."

The last statement barely registered to Luke. White-armored stormtroopers rounded a corner and opened fire. They must have been instructed to choose Maul as their primary target, because Luke found himself in a tunnel of blaster bolts flashing past, being deflected with "ping!" sounds over the lightsaber hum away from Maul and Luke. Then the human had a clear path to Darth Vader. His lightsaber shrieked as Luke ignited it. Maul's latest words floated into his consciousness in a moment of clarity.

"What--"

Vader's saber was activated, red, down and coming up. Luke blocked it and attacked but like an indestructible wall a heavy-looking parry swept his blade off target. Vader's black eye-lenses bored in to Luke like a bubble of silence in the midst of the battle sounds.

"That's impossible!" Luke screamed.

He cut fast at Vader and was blocked again but the angry fighting momentum felt so good--He had not seen a horizon in weeks--

The stormtroopers were on the ground and Vader filled the hallway, the universe it seemed, in front of Luke, negating the mobile fighting style Maul had taught. Luke took a step backwards and gestured, palm forward--

The Force push did nothing to Vader. Maul appeared between them and pushed Luke away by the shoulder. The double-bladed lightsaber spun and Luke stumbled down the corridor, mind fogged not by the Force. Luke would not run further but Maul was insistent and pushing him with a mental force he could not resist. A corridor branched off from the first one a few steps in front of the young man.

Darth Maul parted from Vader with a graceful twisting leap.

_My father. That's unexpected. _Unexpected too was how it felt like a glass wall existed now between Luke and any relevant emotion.

Vader stamped down the hallway after them.

Luke scoped the wide catwalk the hallway on the right lead to. The door to it could be closed and the walkway itself retracted--

A man swathed in a brown cloak stood on the other side of the bridge. A Force presence as powerful as any Luke had known before emenated from it, shining like blue sky in a world of thunderstorms.


	7. Chapter 7

_Thank you, reviewers, and also the various people who put this on their favorites or alert lists. Disclaimer I forgot before: _Star Wars _creations and all recognizable dialogue belongs to Mr. George Lucas and I make no monetary profit by them. _

VII

He had never known his world was storm. Luke stood still, gaze riveted to the old man as waves of new experiences in the Force broke over him. It felt overwhelming; he closed his eyes, disregarding the two Sith behind him, but the old man's Force presence glowed behind his eyelids.

Darth Maul, unflustered, spoke from behind Luke. "You cannot take him." Maul strode onto the catwalk, placing himself between Luke and the frighteningly different newcomer. He advanced like a hunting dragon. The newcomer said something Luke could not hear over the lightsaber hums and--

Vader's breathing. The emperor's pet Sith had caught up. He started at the unbegun battle on the bridge. Luke was caught between Vader, the impossibly clean walls of the corridor, Maul and the newcomer, and the six-meter drop to the hallway below which ran parallel to the catwalk. He raised his saber, trying to drive away his fear and replace it with useful anger. Vader did not move at first, only staring, and laughed for a few beats of his breathing. Then he Force-pushed both himself and Luke off the sides of the catwalk.

They landed with no more impact than had they jumped one step down. Luke regained his footing swinging his saber; Vader stepped close and parried. With an flourish --or simply brute strength--from Vader Luke's lightsaber flew out of his suddenly stinging hands.

"You have potential, boy." Vader rumbled. "But not like this."

Luke pulled at the strings of the universe to retrieve his saber haft but Vader blocked the flying object with the back of his gloved hand. The hilt fell to the floor again. Luke crouched and turned parallel to Vader, flicking glances down the empty, featureless hall behind him, grimacing with short, wild bares of his teeth. He pleaded to the Force that Maul would hear his psychic distress calls, but only the sounds of clashing lightsabers came from above.

"Join me," said Darth Vader, "and I will show you the true power of the dark side."

"I'll never join you--"

Vader advanced, saber held at his side as if he knew he would not need it. Luke attempted Force pushes but they and his frenetic attempts at intrusion into Vader's mind washed off of the Sith like liquid off his metal armor. "You have been told many lies about me and the empire...and one truth."

The old man died. Luke knew it without question before Maul's lightsaber ceased slicing through him, so powerfully did the Force resonate with finality. At this undisciplined level he could not help looking up.

Then Vader did something; Luke would never know whether it was a physical or mental strike but he felt reality detach itself from his concerns. His body, collapsing, was of no consequence. His last thought was to wonder which statement about the Empire, and from who, had been a truth--and to powerfully hope that it was not the one which reminded him both of home--Tatooine--and of a terrifying, impossible future.


	8. Chapter 8

VIII

Han Solo spread his hands jovially. "Come on boys. I'll get you a drink," he cajoled. "There's only one reason why I'm here and that's because this barve wanted to be. Whatever he's been doing," _about that tractor beam_, he added in his thoughts, "I've just been here, minding my ship."

"So you've brought controlled substances into military airspace too, mister Solo?" said the most talkative, authoritative, and obnoxious of the four stormtroopers gathered around the _Millennium Falcon_'s entry ramp.

Footsteps clattered and high-pitched shots screamed out in the near distance. Han's complimentary guards turned, saw the source of the disturbance at an angle that Han, farther up the ramp, could not, and, two putting their fingers to their helmet-mounted commlinks as if unsure whether they were hearing correctly, trotted away.

Han was left alone, smiling, until a young woman appeared from beneath the boarding ramp. She wore a simple, flattering white dress and was fine-featured, but her voice was anything but fine and dainty. "Just to get this straight," she said quietly, "your ship is not my preferred mode of transport. It's just the one that looks most likely not to want to be here either. Come on, we've got to escape!" She hurried up the ramp toward him.

The first question-slash-protest he formed was "What about the tractor beam?"  
"I took care of that." She sidled past him, into the ship. He could hear more stormtroopers' blasters shooting at--it didn't matter, it wasn't Han. He turned to face the girl, angrily. "Listen, sister, you _pay _to fly on my ship."

She put one slim hand on her hip and pointed at him. "I am the princess of Alderaan and...You'll be rewarded enough if you get me off this floating prison."

He whistled. "All right." She began to follow him to the cockpit. She looked even more beautiful in proximity than she had before. "I guess I oughta thank you for dealing with the exit. Why exactly were you sneaking around here anyway?"

"They had me kidnapped to get political information. The guards got distracted and when I hit the interrogation droid, it must've went crazy. When I got here it happened to provide a nice distraction."

Han thought this adventure almost too much of a coincidence, but if she was the princess of Alderaan, she was rich--and she was pretty. Going from the old man who'd paid in a handful of chits and some sparkly trinkets to the reward he'd get from Alderaan and this woman helping him out of the monstrous Imperial station was no troublesome choice.

**Maul **could have recognized him anywhere or any-when, as if by smell. The lines of teenage Obi-Wan Kenobi were all but gone from his face, but his bright Force presence had grown much stronger and more distinct. It amused Darth Maul to see his killer shrunken to this old man, this being with deep furroughs of emotion in his flesh and his mind half-dead already.

He killed his old foe quickly, never slowing his pace to match Kenobi's slowed movements and reflexes. The few exchanges, ferocious and single-minded, were propelled by a Sith who relished seeing Kenobi dead. When the Jedi did fall, though, Maul could not gloat as he had anticipated.

Kenobi's body disappeared. Maul kicked the empty brown cloak over and over, hating the very uniform of the Jedi and knowing but not appreciating that all but a few were dead. Maul cut the azure lightsaber, which lay at first on top of Kenobi's cloak, into three pieces. He did not understand the disappearance, and cast about in the Force at first for Kenobi's presence, but it was gone.

Vader too was gone, but only physically. He had taken Luke. Maul almost went after them; he took the steps toward the catwalk's edge. He knew, though, where Vader would go if he moved on to a planet. He would have stormtroopers around him now, and it would be foolish to attack anywhere Vader sanctioned, where the mediocre mass of troops could not overwhelm him.

These thoughts came quickly, and disappointment almost shuddered though Darth Maul. He had learned how to operate alone always, how to restrain himself before poor chance overwhelmed initial motivation. He would have preferred to be pointed immediately at something or someone to kill.

Quietly, Maul headed back to his ship.


	9. Chapter 9

IX

Luke awoke to darkness. His hands were bound, his mouth dry. An unseen door opened in front of him, creating a strip of thick golden light which soon became blinding. He tried to speak and could not. When he closed his eyes against the light he heard the shushing sound of Darth Vader's breathing.

He shook his head and hands, testing the simple but implacable bonds, and found his voice. "Where am I?"

"No longer on the Death Star," Vader rumbled. The Force allowed Luke certain perceptions; drifting in black space as dead as stars in the wake of cataclysm--the Imperial would try to keep him in the black room. Its cold seeped from the floor. He could be sitting on glass inside some opaque nebula.

"Your so-called master told you something." Vader said.

Luke could not remember what, though he knew there was one statement of greatest import; Vader could only be speaking of one thing, that which Luke did not want to hear again. He shook his head.

"You cannot deny it." Vader's mechanical voice was crisp and emotionless. The golden light died, leaving Luke with Vader's breathing, the lighter black outlines of himself and the small cubes securing his binders, and multicolored winking points of light, like a window onto the stars. "I am your father."  
"My father piloted a freighter in the clone wars."

"That's what Owen Lars told you."

_The second most powerful man in the galaxy knows my uncle's name._

"It was always your destiny to join_ me _on the dark side. We can overthrow the Empire and rule the galaxy as father and son."

Luke was surprised at how clear his thoughts were once he gave up trying to escape. The parts of his life--Tatooine, the Sith training--converged and made sense with this new scene, with his new, almost complete life. He said, "I already have a master. His goal is to destroy you."

"This is unexpected indeed," Vader said, his anger in the Force filling the limitless space Luke perceived or imagined around them. "It doesn't matter!" He continued. "Your loyalties will be to the Empire and me."

"Why?" said Luke. Many citizens of Tatooine and elsewhere in the galaxy, though they would not make waves, disliked the Empire. It had concreted Luke's convictions when he found that the powerful Sith Darth Maul did not either.

"The time of the Clone Wars were corrupt," Vader said. "Do not assume you know what occurred when our galaxy changed hands. The Republic was a crumbling wreck when the emperor rescued it. The Republic's best hope had betrayed it--" His voice rose in a crescendo of anger, then calmed again. _"_Darth Maul was only a lackey in my master's service. He should be as extinct as his prey."

Luke tried to get his feet under him and stand to defend his teacher's honor, but the binders restrained him.

"I had to give you up, Luke. The emperor will teach you what Sith greatness truly is."

The golden light reappeared. A voice summoned Vader; he turned away. Had he stopped the personal attack (or attempt at consolation) in "I had to give you up" to save face for this person? Luke saw the multicolored lights disappear and Vader's tall figure eclipse the light from outside. The door closed, sealing the blackness behind it.

_My father lives behind that mask...Anakin Skywalker. My own name spoken by lips throughout history, with I knowing nothing of the worlds this life stemmed from. _He tried to convert the feelings of sad hopelessness into anger, but there would be no task to put anger to. He had not known Sith politics were so complicated--and involved in history the average being had been encouraged to forget. He was determined to remain loyal to the one person who had given him the extraordinary power of the Force and, although it had shattered his perceptions painfully, told him the truth about his father; that Anakin Skywalker had become a simple treacherous bully.

Luke tried to detect Maul through the Force--

A gentle blue glow suffused the area and Luke snapped to full alert. The room was not bordered by a window onto space but by close, dark, metal walls. The old man from the Death Star, whom Maul had so clearly killed, stood where Vader had moments ago. He glowed with the blue tint of a hologram, but his Force presence too filled the room with a range of emotion Luke had never in this way experienced.


	10. Chapter 10 edited

X

"Who are you?" Again Luke tried to stand, almost screaming, feeling overwhelmed, wishing his eyes burnt orange like Darth Maul's. That would be fitting, unlike this black-on-black caging blue.

"My name is...Obi-Wan," the old man said jovially. Beneath the brown cloak he had a lined face, white hair and beard, shadowed maybe-blue eyes.

"You're dead."

Obi-Wan shook his head and smiled a smile which invited you to trust. "There are many things which have not been explained to you, dear Luke. But even how I come here connects to every one of them. I will not impart any revelations if you have had enough of them. You will hear a new version of your current world view."

"Vader gave me enough revelation.

Speak your version too." Perhaps the puzzle pieces would fit together with one more view from a different angle. Luke did feel calmer in this presence than he had in Vader's, fear and denial notwithstanding--it was in Luke's current crude terms, as if the Force liked Obi-Wan. It had been ambivalent toward Maul and rued Vader.

Obi-Wan sat down on the floor before Luke. "I was once a Jedi Knight, the same as your father." He correctly interpreted Luke's blank expression. "We were the guardians of peace and justice in the universe, servants of the Republic. Darth Vader, and the emperor, betrayed and murdered the Jedi to take complete control.

"There are two sides, two aspects of the Force, Luke, light and dark. Right and wrong. Darth Maul has been using you and teaching you the dark side because he covets Vader's place as the emperor's second in command. The dark side uses people like that. You should belong to the light, Luke.

"I can appear to you after death because of the will of the Force and certain skills I learned from it."

Luke had been thinking hard during Obi-Wan's addendum which had answered one of his first questions. _How _paled in comparison to the viewpoints of history Luke aligned in his head. There were two kinds of the Force, one hidden from him until now. The Empire violently taking over from peaceful Force-users and the Old Republic was not what high-schoolers learned in History, but it was easily imagined knowing how the law worked on Tatooine. However, his was not only pedagogical experience. Quietly he said, "There's nothing wrong with the dark side. My master is fighting Darth Vader. So are you, and I."

"Luke, your new master is a murderer. I...knew him, in the early stages of my life which people now like to call the old days. He hunted Jedi like an animal, or did whatever deed his master the emperor bid, all in secret and shadows. You cannot be like that. Will you prioritize your own power and safety over the lives of children, or of entire planets?" Obi-Wan looked concerned, not angry.

Both Vader and Obi-Wan had disparaged Darth Maul, however, and Luke was used to brutal physical training and glares which had more impact than screams. The old man's expression and words came to him as uninformed and paltry. Maul had done nothing, in Luke's experience, like Obi-Wan described.

"You do not have to believe me, Luke," said the old man. "I know this must be hard, but I want to help you.

"Vader is indeed your father. You were born to him and the senator of Naboo--she was a good woman--just after he turned to the dark side. They loved you.  
"Now...he will try to bring you to his side. The _light_ is your destiny, as I still believe it is his. I will not often be able to appear to teach you." He now looked sad. "May the Force be with you."

The blue glow faded with Obi-Wan inside it. Luke sat still with a new understanding of the galaxy's main players, but no shift in morality. He thought some, slept some, very restless. No one corporeal or otherwise visited him then. The darkness, featurelessness, became his life on Tatooine. He waited for adventure or even sequential non-routine events and never received them. He cried for Owen and Beru, but, mind split, thanked Darth Maul for his new and exciting life. He could think of nothing at which to rage, and nothing at which he could succeed to do with the Force to escape or entertain himself. He did not know the hour, but was sickeningly hungry. His strong mind likewise hungered for escape and distraction.

The Force, it seemed, did not know what to do with him.

Ages later the door opened. Luke looked up weakly but with hope.


	11. Chapter 11

XI

Darth Maul ran on to the _Infiltrator _in a rage. Doors slammed by gratuitous use of the Force; Maul stood in the cockpit and started the ship. Sensors told him the tractor beam had failed. As the _Infiltrator _lifted and passed through the atmosphere containment field Darth Maul manned the laser cannons and shot at the Death Star's weaponry emplacements, docking bay doors and atmosphere generators, personnel--anything to wreck havoc and repay Vader for taking Luke. The apprentice would not betray Maul, the Sith was certain--Luke had too much hatred instilled in him for that. The other, worse, options were Luke being killed or both Vader and Luke, knowledgeable of their relationship, being brought before the Emperor. Darth Sidious' skills were not to be underestimated no matter his name.

Maul settled slightly as his ship burst from the Death Star in a cloud of smoke and flew to a distance good for orbiting the false moon. In black, peaceful space Maul stopped snarling. He became the silent hunter, all of the ship's impressive stealth technology activated so that no one on even the Death Star paid attention to the _Infiltrator _floating around it.

They would be coming soon, he sensed, though he could not know his dangerous quarry's exact location.

After a few minutes he detected a modified Lambda shuttle launching from the space station. Quietly he moved to visual range. The Lambda looked more like a robotic fish than they typically did. An entire deck had been added to it beneath the stock body. Large engines behind the craft's wings were covered with flanges that extended on to the thin wings, making them bulky with planes and shadows. Large lasers hung in front of the wings like fins or feelers.

Maul accelerated. The _Infiltrator_ passed over Vader's ship at great speed and dropped a tracking device. It scurried under a flange and stuck there. Maul keyed in a preset nearby destination and jumped to hyperspace before the Imperial pilot knew he was there. This first journey would be a short one. Once he was sufficiently removed from the Death Star's airspace he would correct the course to follow Vader's. Whenever the Lambda exited hyperspace, Maul would know.

It would be a long journey then. Plans must be made for its end. Only guessing Vader's destination for now, though, Maul stomped out of the cockpit to prepare in the ways he always had. Weights training, kata, focus and rage.


	12. Chapter 12

Convergence XII

Two figures clothed in black walked the thin hallways of the Lambda cruiser _Consequence._ Vader saw himself as one of them, as if he were remote. He was a giant, an android, a bellows. Luke was a wisp, a human.

He stayed silent as Vader looked down at him immediately after letting him out of the room which had been made into his cell. Vader could sense ferocious anger in him which, in his son whom he had never seen as a child, he found repugnant. He had trouble forming the next words he spoke. The tone must be a politician's; alluring and friendly but adamant.

"I know that you have been taught well, Luke. You would be a great asset to the Empire."

"I don't want to join the Empire."

"I have found you after so long. Don't you wonder about my thoughts?"

"They are of enslavement. You have taken the galaxy. You will not take me."

Vader stopped. A thin viewport window was beside them now, looking out into the blue and white of hyperspace. Luke stopped too, shying like a cat. "Listen to me." Vader's voice clearly expressed his frustration. "I do not speak such because I am the Emperor's Sith. I want to know you, Luke. You are my son. We are alike, even if you deny it. "

Luke whispered, his voice crisp but quiet. He spoke to the viewport. "I was never like you." its innocence and naiveté,

**Luke **felt very confused. Conviction escaped him, but memory continued and brought with it moral codes or worldviews which switched like channels. On Tatooine he was so innocent and naïve. Then he was thrown in to a metaphorical fighting ring, perhaps even a dogfight. His emotions, when he found them, flip-flopped and tried to leave again. He held on to them. He had to choose. The floor was solid, space dark, and he had to take a stand.

He just did not know what stand it was.

"Why me?" He asked.

Vader did not hesitate, but he was monotone. "Because you are my son."

Luke did not want that answer. "No it's not. There's some motive behind it, you're trying to convert me. Do you want to overthrow the emperor or not? Am I a pawn?"

"No. It is because you are my son." Luke felt Vader's cold, gloved hand on his arm.

Luke growled, "That's not the way of the Sith. Love, emotion like that. It's not _there_ for us." _Us_ meant Maul.

"Then it is not." Vader kept his hand on Luke's arm but turned his head away. His helmet looked like the muzzle of a dog frozen in stone.

"You said my mother died giving birth. What was she like?" His tone implied _who would marry you_, but that was an afterthought. A wall had been broken.

A stormtrooper with his helmet under his arm appeared around the corner, with a fully uniformed partner immediately behind. Vader turned away from Luke. The young man took a deep breath. The lack of any scent in the rigorously clean ship smelled very alien to him.

The stormtrooper with short black hair and blue eyes started when he saw Darth Vader standing in the hallway. It appeared that both Imperials had been deep in conversation and possibly spiced; they looked up in shock.

"What are you doing?" Vader said slowly.

The fully-armored stormtrooper thought fast. "Routine security check sir. We were watching the prisoner. But you seem to have that under control."

"Yes I do. Begone!"

The men turned and jogged away.

After he had taken a few steps the helmet under the arm of the silent one clattered out of his grip. He stopped. His expression when he turned was interesting; superstition and suspicion, the former doubling the latter. Luke could not tell directly whether Vader had manipulated the Force to peeve the stormtrooper, but he could sense the dark lord's anger coupled with amusement. Luke smiled.

Vader sighed, a growling, almost unrecognizable note.

The fear the two men showed Vader struck Luke in a way the rumors of planet-wide terror did not. This fear was personal; a quickening of steps, a rush of breath, the personal signs of nervousness. Luke had never imagined his father this way.

Anakin was a pilot. In the course of his galactic runs he encountered one thousand fabulous adventures birthed from Luke's mind from childhood to high school; gunfights with space pirates, astronomical phenomena to test the reflexes and the shields of his ship, or strange planets to explore. Always he had arrived safe and experienced at his destination, but with a fantastic detour in the records. Anakin was a hero, his type changing as Luke grew and changed.

He did not know why that Anakin reminded him of Vader now.

_I am too swayed, _he thought again._ If I were in Darth Maul's presence I would think as he does. Now in Vader's presence I begin to change, but I would always change back._ The only one who had not changed him was the Jedi ghost. Now Luke resolved to keep his feelings throughout changing scenery. This feeling of…nostalgia? for Anakin in connection to Vader meant a deepening of the connection between them. First Luke hated that.

Then Vader turned to him. He said no word of explanation, nothing more about his feelings or ideals or plans. He said, "Luke. Roam the ship if you wish. See how it works. You cannot harm it.

"You are under my wing now."

Luke thought this almost kind enough for him to warrant saying "Yes, father." He resisted that impulse.

Single-mindedly, and somewhat shaky at first from sitting down for such a length of time as he had in the dark room, he went in search of the ship's galley.


	13. Chapter 13

XIII

"A visitor will come for you, Mara Jade."

She could have looked at the works of art, or the darkening navy blue sky outside. Instead she chose the emperor.

"Destinies are converging." He said. "There will be an assassin in these halls soon. You are to eliminate him."

She was kneeling five paces from him, chill in the office from her low-cut and sleeveless black tunic. She would not show her discomfort. Palpatine was her sovereign and family. Eventually she would forget physical things. "Yes, master." She said. This mission was not her first kill, but it felt exciting. She was only sixteen.

Mara and Palpatine shook hands to dismiss her. She slid her cold fingers slowly from his.

**

* * *

****"He **can be redeemed." 

Luke was just waking, uncomfortably sitting in the cell, when Obi-Wan Kenobi appeared again. Luke had sat on a couch elsewhere in the Lambda for a time, but the stormtroopers had gotten nervous—and he had wanted to kill them.

He looked up at the apparition.

Obi-Wan said, "Your training has become confused. It will not be easy. You must know the dark side…" He extended his left hand down to his side. Lightning, blue and illusory, crackled from his hand. "…and the light." He raised his right hand. Light glowed from it and Luke felt slight peace and healing pass through him, just as he may have felt pain during the lightning.

Luke said, "You told me of this. I still don't understand the difference between what you call the two sides. My father was kind to me today."

"The way you use the Force affects you. Jedi—and Sith—are nothing like normal beings in the ways they get used to thinking. When you can, at a whim, kill or heal, truly affecting reality…it changes your eyes." His deep voice lacked some seriousness in the last sentence.

"He was kind. They were. Are," said Luke.

"They will corrupt you. They use and trick people."

" So the light side just judges and condemns?" He snapped.

"Ah, you're thinking now. The first thing I told you when I came in was that Vader can be redeemed. You can be too."

Luke's hunger pangs were fading. He did not want to sleep, but neither did he want to talk. The potential boredom frustrated him. "Be quiet, old man."

"You like that rudeness, that freedom, don't you?" said Obi-Wan. "You will see what it gave the emperor. You know Mos Eisley—you know Anchorhead—and what the Empire brought them."

Luke looked up. "You know Anchorhead?"

"I lived on Tatooine once. I watched as you grew up."

"What?" Luke exclaimed. "You knew me too? Vader isn't the only one who keeps secrets? Is the Emperor really my uncle?"

"I protected you from your father. There are no more secrets, Luke. Trust me." He pleaded, hurt by the accusation, as much as his composure would allow.

"I never knew I was that important."Luke said quietly.

The Jedi ghost smiled. "You are. You are very important."

When he faded, Luke thought about the tyranny of the Empire, and of his simple self who skated beneath the political injustices on his planet or even in his region. Their source was much clearer to him now; it was Vader and the highest-ranking Sith Lord, the emperor. He resolved to be that innocent person no longer.

Then he fell asleep again, because he had gone through so much. He slept for much of the trip. His body twitched; he was used to lots of movement. He turned his head from side to side, looking at the blackness and imaging the bright stars outside.

The _Infiltrator_ passed him in the eternal airless night and no soul on the Lambda consciously noticed.

Mealtimes were very awkward. Luke sat before Vader when he ate, and his father stared at him. Luke would not ask whether Vader knew the taste of food. He wondered often about his mother, but it would have been a sort of obscenity to ask Vader about his wife, or so thought Luke's young, nervous mind.

It was at the finish of a mealtime that they disembarked from hyperspace and entered the airspace of Coruscant. Vader and Luke rushed to the cockpit to look out of the wide windows.

Luke's sense of wonder returned and, in a rush, the last few days of tiredness were forgotten. In his imagination he explored each drifting traffic-jammed ship, each shining orbital mirror and gun platform, and each whorl or nebula of light which marked out a section of the city on the planet's surface. He thought, _I will meet the emperor soon. I will bow before him. I will be his hand as Vader is…unless. Whose thoughts are mine now? Whose are these uncertain, frightened ones?_

_Obi-Wan Kenobi's, _he laughed. He had never told Vader about the visions.

_No. They are only mine._


	14. Chapter 14

XIV

A few days earlier, Darth Maul arrived on Coruscant.

A bored-sounding space-air traffic controller said, in Basic and Bocce, "Sienar Courier _Infiltrator, _cleared to land on by 11 dock 38. Sienar Courier _Infiltrator, __yezzo__landar__atanox-wun__dok__trebanox-kata__."_

From the docking bays to the entrance hall of the Imperial Palace's reception offices he was just another unidentifiable being on the street, wearing a rust-red sleeveless shirt with black pants and boots. He averted his eyes from passersby the spare them his intensity. He was disgusted by their weakness and did not hide it.

The Imperial Palace's walls and interior décor were fluted and metallic, grand and imposing, pastel punctuated by stormtroopers in their bone-white armor at every entranceway. Maul passed through the loose governmental offices un-remarked-upon until he found a small café and exited through an unlocked window. Force speed carried him up the smooth wall until he found hand-and foot-holds ; window ledges, the old or occupied nests of creatures, fluctuations in the material. When he was as to his destination as he could be without tripping security nets, he used the door between a round dock and a starship or speeder berth to enter the palace.

He first saw the woman or girl as she bent over a mirror with a fern on a pedestal beneath it, patting the red hair on top of her head. She made it look convincingly like she did not know that he was there watching her.

He knew, however, that she was perfectly aware of him. The Force was strong with her.

Both held sabacc hands worth twenty-three. He channeled his rage.

He moved toward her. Obviously she was one obstacle on his path to desperate revenge. As she turned, her right hand coming to her hip, the floor collapsed beneath Maul. The emperor's traps--!

He fell into water and creatures which snapped and coiled, thorn-scaled skin biting with its quick movements as the mouths bit. The tiny pit or room was filled with ankle-deep water and crystal-blue snakelike beasts which jumped for any prey they could find. Maul raised his hands. The creatures attacking him flew into the air. Five meters up the Force released them to squirm, dripping on the polished floor. The pain of the attacks did not bother Maul but increased the useful, darkside emotions. He monitored himself for effects of poison.

He leapt out of the pit. The girl was ready, though he could sense her fear.

She threw snake-creatures at him with the Force one tiny scrap of time before he emerged from the trap and shot at him after that. Darth Maul pushed himself into Teras Kasi gymnastics in the air, using the Force to evade all of the blaster bolts except one. Taking one, dissipating the lethal heat throughout the thick muscle of his shoulder, that would frighten her. He enjoyed cultivating fear.

He was designed for that purpose.

He kicked as he came to the ground; she jogged away. He drew his lightsaber; not even knowing how to fight a Force-user, how to distract, she kept firing the small blaster.

The flash of one red lightsaber deflected all of her shots back to her. She threw up a Force shield to block the lasers. At the same time, she drew her lightsaber, finally with her feet in the proper arena, and charged.

Maul held one hand flat at his eye level, stepped to the girl's right, and sliced at her midsection with his lightsaber. She blocked the attack with her blade, but he was also behind her now. He pulled her hair and stomp-kicked her ankle; she collapsed backwards.

He ran up the hallway to a round intersection of four hallways. They would both need more room if the fight were to be anything worthwhile.

He circled for a moment. The snake-creatures looped, slippery with water, on the floor in the first hallway. Maul felt no poison yet.

The girl ran at him, deep in rage and vengeance, lightsaber spinning between her hands.

Her scarlet blade sizzled against his twice. He stepped aside, flipped his blade, cut for her shoulders. She spun away. They traded strikes and slashes across the room. She fought well enough; quickly, mostly neatly, but she did not know as much as he did. Sidious' handiwork she was, but not honed enough, nor durably built.

Each attacked, defended, strove. Darth Maul was tuned in to the Force but nevertheless the duel's final move was almost surprising to him; it simply proved him the better swordsman. He parried her lunge with a twist, then pivoted and kicked. She jarred her shoulder against the wall, stumbling. He followed up with a stab which sunk too deep into her center.

Maul paced away as she fell, mentally shaking off the fight-rage. Now he would kill the Sith Lord-turned-emperor, and death did not outweigh obsessive revenge.

When the life of the red-haired girl flickered finally out in the wake of her weak mental and physical cries a visible wall of light bloomed down upon Maul. He struck it with the back of his fist. Ray shields were rare, but such was what encased him in a sky-blue column of impenetrable energy.

He began to use his lightsaber to slice through the antique floor.


	15. Chapter 15

_A/N: Much thanks to the reviwers. If you would, go check out my friend ArgenteousDraco's Star Wars stories; she's new to the fandom. Yay! Also a Deep Quote has been added to the beginning of Convergence. This chapter has been edited for word choice and little things like that. lol, I'm glad the stormtroopers are amusing. They're becoming more like actual characters than I thought. Maybe they're Tag and Bink...if anyone catches that reference I'll be happy. _

XV

The Imperial palace, former seat of the senate, was now ruined and reformed. The undead masterpiece of Coruscanti architecture it had become astounded Luke Skywalker. He found himself criticizing his home, and also remembering it in every breath he took, because they were indrawn, awestruck breaths as he saw the skyways and turbolifts and liquid-gold-reflections of the city planet. He did not mind that Vader and stormtroopers walked beside him in these opulent surroundings. Alien senators walked or flew past and no one bothered to tell Luke not to gawk.

The time transition had not been smooth; night was falling on Coruscant, not with two suns setting over the desert but with sections of the tower-broken sky blackening like spaces on a dejarik board as orbital mirrors turned, and Luke was not tired. He was given a room in the visiting senators' wing. The walls were paneled in gold. It had the basic amenities for a human occupant, with shuttered windows looking down the face of the building to the endless vertical streets. Luke looked out the windows once and, though at that time he stared and watched the speeders pass like gleaming beetles, he did not look again. Neither his father Darth Vader nor anyone else came to speak with him after the lights in the sky went out. He went to sleep under uncomfortably cold and scentless sheets, wearing the black pants he had come in. The Imperials had provided him with a change of clothes, but only one, and he felt that they meant to unsettle him. _Why would such a small thing bother me,_ he wondered. It was as if bigger troubles converged and concentrated one on tiny, illogical, infuriating thing.

He tried to get comfortable and could not; at about at the time when he began to feel sleep settling its fog around his brain he was awakened by a blue diffuse glow before his eyes.

Obi-Wan Kenobi stood in all his blue-white glory by the door to the room. Luke shaded his eyes and muttered.

"You shouldn't bare your teeth when you get angry. You'll bite your tongue," said Kenobi.

Luke moved his feet to the floor. His eyes were adjusting. "You sound like Darth Maul."

" I've never heard that before. Come here, young one. This city has much to teach you."

Luke thought about saying _and you do not,_ but he was too tired and apathetic to fight. "You can go out there?"

"You can."

"Now?"

"Go. " The Force-ghost opened the door. There was the city street, lit by red neon light with many beings still traveling it, where there should have been a plain corridor. Luke was enthralled, though he now thought it a dream. No harm in dreams…

He took from the clothing rack a yellow jacket which he had been provided and put it on along with his boots. He stepped out of the door.

Obi-Wan lead him down iron spiral staircases and transparisteel turbolifts, past alluring alien women and begging alien children, past humans in packs, holographic advertisement boards in flights. Lower and lower, deeper into the darkness, deeper into the history which was almost myth.

They came to a place where Luke's footprints smudged dust. Fewer sentient creatures passed him. He felt alone here, as if the phantom Jedi were becoming less solid every moment.

Obi-Wan lead him to a wall. Above it towered buildings which had used it as their roots. They were mostly of the modern kind, glass and pastel-metallic, but none reached as high as their surrounding, darker neighbors. One had fallen in upon itself on one floor, as if a giant child had thrown a rock at the gleaming facets.

Luke knew, as one knows facts in dreams, that the place was unlucky.

"The Jedi Temple," said Obi-Wan. His physical form had indeed grown less substantial and left his voice almost alone. "Almost unrecognizable now, but once we…lived here. The Council sat on a spire far above what has tried to retake this plot of ground. The Padawans lived in another spire…Anakin in all of them, at one time or another. He was a good friend. If you could see his spirit here…" Luke was surprised at the sincere sadness in the Jedi's voice. He had been urging Anakin-Vader to so-called redemption, conversion, before, but now it was as if he cared not for sides. He had lost a brother.

Luke could almost hear children running in what he imaged as the Jedi Temple. The girl Twi'lek picking through scraps behind a food stand, she could have been a Master. The punk human with green hair and a cigarette in his mouth who lounged outside a bar as he waited to turn eighteen and truly throw his life away, he could have wielded a lightsaber beautifully, with righteousness shining in his eyes. Luke saw them as Anakin walked by them in the past.

Anakin smiled and felt home.

"He was a good man, first," said Obi-Wan.

_I could aspire to be that. I could aspire to replace what he has lost ._Luke flexed his hands. He knew the rumor that Darth Vader was entirely machine and, while their conversations and the Force attested to his mind not being lost, his son liked to contrast himself to his father.

Then, _these are light side thoughts! _

Then, _they are admirable, as Anakin was. _

Luke preferred the image of himself as whole and the building there for him to see rather than those of Vader's falsehood and the buildings designed to erase the Jedi Temple falling in on themselves through the grief of the Force.

"I don't want to join the Empire if it changed him."

"And the dark side?"

"Kenobi, is the dark side Maul's rage, or Vader's calculating evil?"

"It is either, but it never brings the user to a happy end. He or she will learn their follies, even if it is just before death. Redemption, though, can come in any moment until the spirit leaves the body."

Luke turned away, his hair ruffling. "'Redemption' sounds so prissy. This will be a rescue from a battlefield."

Obi-Wan smiled and laughed a little. "That it will be.

Do you know which side you are on?"

Pause. "I want to rescue my father from what he has become. But I will not kill Darth Maul."

Obi-Wan appeared to consider. "We shall see," he said, meaning the passage of events and not Luke's choice. "Sparing a life is very admirable, if no other lives shall be lost in consequence."

"Can I keep this conviction, old man? Am I simply converted by whomever I'm standing with at the moment?"

"That is a sense of empathy. Practice feeling the light side of the Force. That will help to anchor you when speaking to the Emperor, especially." Fear entered his voice, fear for Luke. "Empathy is a great gift, but the Emperor will try to manipulate it. Practice your use of the Force. Do not use it as Maul has taught you. The Force is not combat, but intent, in all ways—"

Blue smoke had been drifting in front of Luke's eyes as Obi-Wan spoke. Luke had not paid much attention to it, trying as he was to memorize Kenobi's words so as to meditate on them later, but when he fully noticed his surroundings again Kenobi was gone. The ruined building was too, and Luke thought that he had experienced a dream. He was standing in the corridor outside his room in the clothes he had been dreaming he had worn, and stormtrooper guards at the other end of the hallway were staring toward him with a distinct sense of confusion.

He laughed a bit at these two guards who kept being frightened by Skywalkers , and attempted to get back into his room.

It was locked; a keycard was necessary for entrance.

"Blast it!" He swore, and turned. The stormtroopers were already coming toward him with a plastic card.

As one noncommittally swiped him into the room the other asked, "Where were you just now, ah, mister Skywalker?"

"Walking."

"How did you get past the other guards? They would at least give you the room key."

"The Force works in mysterious ways," said Luke.

That placated or scared them. They went away.

Luke lay down to sleep; it took him quickly this time. When he awoke he lay there and meditated as Obi-Wan had commanded, but he thought about how he had imagined his father before he knew the truth. Anakin always defeated 'the bad guys'. Apparently, that once had been the case with Vader.

He could remember the conversation with Obi-Wan very clearly. Had it been a dream? More likely a vision. How much truth was in it? He must have walked out of the building with Obi-Wan, cloaked in the Force perhaps, somehow. His boots left dusty tracks.

When he awoke fully he dressed, brushed his unruly blonde hair, and did some teras kasi work. Then a knock came on the door. He knew it was Darth Vader.

"Good morning, father."

Vader was standing in the hallway with the two guards who had let Luke in last night. "You were told not to walk out of this building," he said immediately.

"I'm sorry."

"Hmm," said Vader, as if he knew Luke may not be saying _sorry _in reference to the walking about the streets. "The emperor wishes to see you."

"Take me to him then," said Luke, and met his father's eyes.


	16. Chapter 16

XVI

The stormtroopers grasped Luke by the arms and marched him in to the hallway. Their grips beneath the white gauntlets felt surprisingly weak. He looked around, but realized that he did not want to escape. He wanted to talk to Darth Vader in private and make him Anakin Skywalker again.

One of the soldiers noticed. "Emperor Palpatine has this building honeycombed with traps. You'd never get out alive if you run away from us now.

Luke remained silent, trying to focus on the Force as he had in meditation. The light side tasted like clean, cool water in his mind.

The offices of the highest echelons of the Empire were not dark and sterile-metallic. Pounding music and screams of agony did not echo through the halls. It was in fact very pleasant there, tastefully and expensively decorated. Luke told himself that he had been expecting nothing else. The Imperial torture chambers were surely only in Mos Eisley.

They passed under the eyes of myriad security systems, Vader's cape sweeping in front of them, until the scarlet carpets of Palpatine's section stretched unbroken before them. The door to his office opened. Although varied kinds of art from every age were displayed around the oval room, Luke's eyes were drawn to Palpatine's even before the intense hiss of hydraulics abated.

"Welcome, young Skywalker," said the emperor. Darth Sidious glowered from deep within Palpatine's shadowed eyes, and Luke despaired of ever finding Anakin in Vader's.

Darth Maul sensed that something was wrong, but there was open space beneath the floor and he resolved to use it as a means of escape. He _would _continue!

He sliced through the floor and dropped two meters. He landed in a perfect stability stance and drew one lade of his lightsaber, because danger-sense was prickling insistently at the back of his neck. His new location was pitch-dark, with solid flooring not unlike the tile above.

Hundreds of red lightsabers ignited around him.

He leapt into action--spinning, slicing, and registering every sensation, retaliatory cuts piercing through his clothing. They did not feel like burns. Several acrobatics later he consciously caught up to the fact that he heard only one double lightsaber.

With his weapon shut down the room was silent and filled with walls. Danger still made itself known, but he simply walked through a maze he could not see, using his hands and intuition, unaccosted, until he found a wall without apparent end or obstacle. There he found controls for the lights.

The trap was revealed—the room was a maze of mirrors. Each reflective panel stood about six feet high. Nothing else threatened him—now or before.

Maul had been fighting mirrors.

He did not snarl or speak. Perhaps his lips tightened, or his eyes blazed.

Then he returned to attacking the mirrors.

Wading in glass, slicing triangles and long angular strips of lethal silver that he now controlled, swirled around him or tossed against other mirrors with the force of his anger, destroying toward the place which had fooled him. When he reached it, he turned back, and began to run toward the door near which he had found the light switch.

More traps awaited, he was sure. However, they expected him to be coming out of the dark, frightened—and instead he was the dark.


	17. Chapter 17

XVII

Darth Maul opened his eyes. His back pressed uncomfortably against the wall of the bland, low corridor he had been walking through until he sat down to sleep. In the Force things moved around him like shifting staircases; creatures stirring in deep pits, traps easing onto their hinges. He had had no idea that Sidious had put all this protection around his Emperor Palpatine persona. It marked the old Sith as frightened—and as not expecting the return of his Zabrak apprentice. The wild lands of Iridonia and many other exercises Sidious had set for Maul during his initial years of training had been more difficult than these clever but obvious traps.

Maul walked on through the passageways. Occasionally he crushed a rabid creature or a trip-mine beneath his heels, but his eyes remained focused toward the obscured sky. The emperor would be on the highest possible level. A passage would lead upward, eventually.

At this moment Luke's gaze slid from Palpatine's. He stood alone, almost feeling the support of the Jedi or the Sith, like a crowd, slipping away from him. He felt like a boy alone before a human monster. The monster's croaking voice spoke unnervingly kind words.

"Welcome, child," said the Emperor. Luke had never imagined a meeting like this, but still he noted how Palpatine here was so different from his public image. His voice creaked and strained now instead of crooning like a barrister for the courts as he did when appearing on holovids. He sat in a simple wooden throne set into the wall. There was no visible desk before it, no signs of papers or business drivel.

Luke looked at him, but his head was bowed and his hair obscuring his vision in stripes.

"I am so _pleased_ to have you join us." Palpatine smiled, and then his ugly face morphed into a neutral expression. "You make such an excellent addition at your father's side."

Luke's lips parted in surprise. The Emperor assumed so much! Luke felt darkside energy eagerly, almost comfortingly reaching out to surround him. He shivered, and stepped back. "I 'm not on your side yet."

"But you know so much! I absolutely cannot afford to lose you. The only thing you need is a new _name_. Bow before me, Skywalker, and I will teach you who you _really_ are..."

"No," Luke breathed. _I'm not ready. _Although he owed no allegiance to the light side, as Kenobi called it, the dark seemed too sickly sweet here, too compelling to trust. He turned, a thin black form against black, and stepped toward the door.

Two guards sheathed in red moved their force pikes from either side of the door toward Luke. The weapons' powered tips could stun the neural system of a Wookiee. Luke clenched his fists.

The Force empowered him like a driving wind. Power like that which turned Maul into a wrathful living storm filled Luke with sensation, silver flooding inside his soul like water in his mouth. Part of him was the guards, their boredom and discipline. He spoke in his own voice. "You will let me pass."

One guard repeated, "I will let you pass," and took the command in a way Luke had not thought of, though the Force did—

He collapsed unconscious as the other guard swung his weapon. Luke parried with his bladed hand across his body and caught the force pike near the guard's armored hand, just below the powered section. He snarled close to the red, t-shaped mask. "You will."

The Force swept the guard away; he fell at Luke's feet, but divergent currents tugged Luke's attention back to the whirlpool seated on the throne. Palpatine's command of the dark side linked himself and Darth Vader, who posed with his head cocked and one foot stepping toward his son. Luke breathed once, realizing that escape would grant him nothing. He still existed in the Force as somewhere between dark and light, unknowing of whether such powers could be mixed and matched to create a 'side' of his own. Where could he go where the Empire would not follow? Where could he run where his own uninformed indecision would not haunt him?

Nowhere in life.

Palpatine's smiled cracked his weathered face. Luke recoiled, disgusted at how proud the emperor seemed to be. As if everything was going according to plan.

Everyone in the room reacted to the newcomer—in the Force, before he stepped from a door disguised by a painting into the throne room—in a different way. Vader activated his lightsaber. Palpatine smirked even more evilly, as if his concocted universe were growing more ironic in his favor. Luke caught the information from the Force-currents second-hand, and he looked up in surprise as Darth Maul stepped out of the recessing painted landscape.

The Zabrak ran for Palpatine, two lightsaber blades swinging and humming. His sharp-featured face looked nowhere but at his former master.

The emperor allowed Maul within a few steps of him. Vader had begun to move, but he was slow to catch up to the smaller Sith.

Palpatine spoke one word over the hum of the lightsabers and the footsteps. He articulated it with utter calm and seriousness, and it sounded like "_Karash._"

Maul stopped in his tracks. There was no hitch in his breathing; it seemed that he had frozen of his own accord. His eyes darted about, showing that that was not so. The Force, trickling as it was away from Luke as his need receded, told of the alien's inner panic. Maul raised his head, trying to move like a bantha under a yoke. Palpatine whispered his word again. He spoke softly in Basic. "Do you think I would leave you a liability? I knew you as a youngling, Darth Maul. You suffered training you do not remember.

I might have conditioned you to harm yourself, instead of simply to stop what you are doing. It was like teaching a dog to come at the sound of a bell. What works best as an incentive, do you think? Punishment or reward?"

Palpatine stood, regal and gnarled like a wroshyr tree. Aside to Vader, he said, "Take your son to the planet Dantooine. The Rebels will have been found by the time you arrive. Make the son of Skywalker your apprentice."

Vader bowed, his rhythmic breath suddenly the only sound in the room outside Luke's blood pounding behind his eyes.

_I get more time._ Luke thought, with relief. _More time to make decisions. To try…_he knew not whether the emperor's easy command of Darth Maul was a Force power, but even if not it illustrated what the supernatural could do in a world which did not understand it. _More time with my father. _He did not know whether this was a good thing or not. He wanted to ask about his mother, but again the current situation seemed to dirty her memory.

What if she were as surprisingly disappointing as Anakin?

_No. _Luke banished that thought. He had only her memories to consider anyway—he had as good as heard of her death from Vader. She would remain a hope for him.

Vader exited the room past the two downed guards without response to them. Luke followed, but looked with a downward and backward glance over his shoulder toward Maul. Luke's first teacher had not moved; nor had Palpatine, except to free his pale hands from his long confining sleeves. Selfishness, not heartlessness, sent Luke walking after Vader without sign or thought for Maul.

Luke had far too much to think about, and he awaited the long journey to Dantoonie, to do whatever travesty he was to do there, as a respite like a long sleep would be to an exhausted man. Only human, he could succumb to indecision and experimentation. He could stop the flood of thoughts.

The Force would not. Luke would soon choose.


	18. Chapter 18

_A/N: This chapter is a little odd-slash-creepy and I didn't expect it, but it's essential to the long version of this fic I am planning for. Yes, it's going to be twenty-something chapters though I wanted to wrap it up in the last two. I could not bring myself to do another climactic battle in a throne room. Enjoy even more Convergence! __J_

XVIII

Maul _hated._

Fully half of the hate translated as hurt, old hurt from Sidious' easy replacement of him as the Sith apprentice and new hurt from that word resonating in his brain, dredging up conscious instinct that forced him to stand as if at attention. Tears might have burnt tracks down the skin of another man, but if Darth Maul had had the instinct to cry it had been conditioned out of him in another time he could not remember. He feared too, what Sidious could do to him now, but he knew to _use_ fear.

His or others' fear, no matter—he could twist it to his will. He summoned the Force to catapult himself toward the emperor, but even that failed. His skin twitched like a horse's when a fly touches it.

He _stared_ at Palpatine.

The human gave no response to the sunburst eyes. He walked around Maul to the other side of the office. "You managed to survive. I count that as a success. But the foolishness to come here—"

He lifted his hands and flung Maul to the floor with the Force. The apprentice landed on his hands and knees and pushed off—his lightsaber clenched in his hand, deactivated—

Lightning fell, crackling through him. He knew this pain and stood through it, still breathing regularly, charging forward. Palpatine raised his hands, about to Force throw again, and Maul dodged the clumsier attempt. Was the old man really weakening?

Then Palatine reached physically for his throat. His fingers poked pressure points around the Zabrak's neck and shoulders. Strange, repulsive not-pain hurt him. He clamped one hand around Sidious' wrist and tried for human pressure points of his own—while his other hand activated his lightsaber.

Shriek! Sidious met the lightsaber with his own and pushed them apart, then charged in, blade held above his head in a berserker's stance. Maul stepped aside as he charged, but Sidious responded fast enough. Maul's second blade whipped toward the human's head and Sidious was still fast enough. His lightsaber style was quick, contained, and different than Maul had known. Always before, Sidious had adopted Jedi's techniques as training tools.

There was a window behind them, one which looked out on dusk over the city. Maul kicked it, affecting the transparisteel very little but creating a focal point, a shatterpoint, for his Force push. Palpatine reached out. The Force flung the window in shards out into empty air; Maul jumped after it. He balanced easily on the edge and swung one lightsaber blade toward the emperor's head. Palpatine dodged backwards, his lightsaber shushing out of existence, and the Maul's saber bit into the wall.

"You're a terrorist now!" Palpatine crowed. "You've broken into my building and attacked. I survived by your stupidity—" The decorative window ledge was beginning to crumble. He stole Maul's breath with the Force, choking him—pain twinged through his scars. He did not panic, did not change his track of thinking. He had to survive now—to prove that he was indeed not what Sidious thought of him.

To prove his master right.

As his vision blurred he kicked at Palpatine's face. Of course the old Sith expected—Maul turned the attack into a hook kick over Palpatine's arm and caught him over the ribs. Maul pivoted, crouching on the window sill, and fluidly placed his lightsaber back on his belt as Palpatine retaliated with a scream and a furious flurry of lightning that finally pained too much—

Maul jumped _up_. He clung to the tower's cupola roof in the dark and the lack of temperature and the thin atmosphere. Quickly he moved up the slope, ducking so as not to be seen by a security machine or an innocent passing speeder.

He fell down the other side of the building, cushioning his landing with the Force on a narrow pipe between two buildings, one Imperial, one independent. He ignited his lightsaber now to smell the ozone tang.

_What now?--!_

He would train more. He would hate more, research more, watch until the Imperial security targeted him with antistarcraft canons and feared him as they traveled home.

But first, he would find his apprentice.


	19. Chapter 19

XIX

A soft wind brushed over the yellow-green grasses of Dantooine. The only obstacles to seeing faultless plains until the horizon was the occasional wide-topped tree and a small herd of flying manta-like creatures which serenely floated over the land, their wings dipping to caress the top of the grasses.

Han Solo peered around a corner, his deadly stripped-down blaster in hand. Nothing moved on the half-cleared street between the prefab buildings.

He advanced to the next cover, a garbage bin.

Blasterbolts crystallized the ground to his right, and a Wookiee roar broke the silence. Han looked up to see Chewie leaning out of one of the few second-stories windows in the base. The Corellian raised his hands. "Alright, you got me. Fine strategy."

Han had been nervous since Princess Leia had bribed and cajoled him into spending some time helping this remnant Rebel base gain supplies. He had spent a lot of it among nervous troops which made him more than willing to practice his marksmanship.

_Speak of the devil—_Leia came around a corner dressed in a loose tan coverall over which she had cinched a weapons belt and a red decorative sash. "Hey," she said. "How are you doing?"

"All right." Han holstered his blaster and spoke sarcastically. "I had no idea this Rebellion was actually so organized, and so prone to teaching its raw recruits how to shoot people. Playing with lasers on Nar Shadaa is one thing. I can't imagine what family squabbles on your _pacifist _planet must've been like—"

Her face turned from soft to stern in a heartbeat. "This is a _war._ If you don't understand—"

"No, sweetheart, it's fine. I'm joking." He guided her by the elbow out of the main street, Chewie clambering down the side of the building in which he had been perched. She tugged away from his grip.

They walked in slightly awkward silence, the kind Han was used to, through the grasses. Satellite-dish-like ion cannon had been set up around the perimeter of the meager base, and the trio walked under the shadow of one. The world smelled like cool air.

Leia said, "I know this planet looks so peaceful. If the Empire finds us, it will be a war zone, just like the rest. We can't let our guard down."

"So we're _we _now, eh?"

"Stop that."

"I just noticed."

They walked past the avenue where troops would rush if AT-ATs ever ascended the hillside.

Han sighed with contentment.

**Luke sat in **the co-pilot's seat of the Lambda shuttle and hated what the dark side had given him. To be dazzled by the Force only to have to abandon his teacher and deal with Vader as his father was a deception of cruelly epic proportions. Fate had aged him. He passed a hand over his face, feeling the scars accumulated somewhere in his Sith training.

No one was sitting in the cockpit beside him. Two stormtroopers had piloted the shuttle off of Coruscant. They were now in the back of the craft with other Imperial troops, preparing for the attack on Dantooine's Rebels.

Luke had never had strong political beliefs; he was too escapist. The Imperial propaganda always labeled the aptly-named Rebels as terrorists and anarchists. He knew, though, that the Empire was no perfect system either. Uncle Owen had ranted on a few occasions about how the word 'corruption' could not describe a government so regularly heartless—before they had killed him.

But now it was not Owen versus the Empire with Luke tagging along. It was not Rebels versus Empire with Luke clearly on one side or another. It was Luke versus Darth Vader his father who wanted to ally with him, and the emperor against Darth Maul Luke's teacher, toward whom Luke felt a mixture of loyalty and apathy, and all of the above versus Obi-Wan Kenobi the Jedi spirit.

He did not know what to think, but he needed it to be his own.

He heard Darth Vader's breathing and footfalls nearing the room. Luke stood up, suddenly claustrophobic among the seats and the computer banks.

Vader simply looked at Luke. The dark lord stood with his arms folded, walls around his heart. "My son," he rumbled. "I did not approve of how the emperor treated you."

Luke sat down again and swiveled the chair so that it's back was almost to Vader. "What are you talking about," he said, monotone.

"I stand beside him, but I do not agree with his methods of governance. You and I, we can remake the Empire." Passion infused his last words.

Luke put his forehead against his crossed arms on the back of the chair. "I don't want to remake the Empire."

"What _do _you want?"

He looked up, grasping the chair as a hawkbat would grasp a prey animal in its talons. "I want peace! I want a real family! I want to understand that I can make something of my life, instead of being pulled along in the wake of powers!"

"You could be a very powerful Force-user—"

"I want my _family! _Tell me, who is my mother? Did you drive her away? Did you hurt her with your metal hands—"

Vader cried out; he rose and pushed Luke's chair as if to throw it across the room; Luke backed away, hands raised in blades. "How dare you speak to me like this!" He advanced. Luke sidled out of the way to the rear of the cockpit.

"What do you mean? You're not high-and-mighty Darth Vader to me," he said, voice crisp and low, hot tears he barely noticed tracking down his cheeks. He cared not for what he would speak, and although now inside he felt the same rage Maul showed in combat Luke also knew that this would be the last of something. "You're not the dark incarnate. You are my father."

Vader screamed and reeled, arms raised. Luke dodged into the open space behind the second row of chairs.

Vader followed him. He did not turn his back on the older man, but turned right and left, angling, presenting his profile. He said, "Have you forgotten how to be hurt, or do you bluff even for me?"

"Even for you," said Vader, and he brought down one armor-bloated fist toward Luke. Luke dodged again and caught Vader's other swinging hand in his own, squeezing the cloth padding ineffectually he tried to twist out away from Vader's front.

_I can use you too._"Why don't you tell me about her?" Luke shouted. "What do you have to hide?"

Vader raised his chin as if to indicate _my face—_it seemed that the ship itself shuddered as he stomped toward Luke again. Luke grimaced for a moment, and ducked under the Sith's arm, an ineffectual move under normal circumstances though now Vader must not have been trying to kill him, he did not bring his elbow down on Luke's head or trip him with his feet, he let him go and stand, swaying, on the other side of the room.

They looked at one another. In a flash Vader drew his lightsaber with his left hand across his body. He rushed Luke, and Luke almost felt his own eyes change color as he stood there and waited for the end result, which he realized at the proper, last moment was not dangerous at all.

Vader's lightsaber sunk halfway to the hilt in the light-studded wall beside Luke's right ear.

"You're going to damage your ship—"Luke began.

Vader said, "She was a Senator, after her reign as queen of Naboo. She could talk a philosopher to the Senate floor or convince the galaxy to impeach its leadership. She could not survive the simple task of birthing children."

Luke's tears beat against Vader's boots. The dark lord turned away.

Luke said, "Thank you," knowing that those words were painful to Vader. He relished finally knowing how to hurt his father under the armor, how to make him acknowledge his humanity even if it was by pretending when it was expected.

He did not need to hate him anymore.

When alone Luke sat again and whipped his tears on the hood of the black cloak the Empire had donated him. The moisture glinted silver over ebony. The room smelled smoky.


	20. Chapter 20

_A/N: Wow, a long chapter. I had to write some HL for this one, which I never expected—and tried to avoid while keeping the jist and the emotion for those who want it. I estimate Convergence to be finished in two or three chapters. Reviewers, thank you very much. Those who haven't reviewed…come on, what better things do you have to do? __J_

XX

Luke and Darth Vader could not avoid one another during the space flight, but the bit of camaraderie they had gained on the first voyage did not return. Enmity glared whenever they made eye contact, which occurred each time they met. Luke would not back down. He was eager for Dantooine, for the life-forms and plains even if they would soon be struck by war. Even though he had always complained about the farm life on Tatooine, after weeks in narrow corridors those vistas and paces were desirable. He spent his time sleeping, watching races on the HoloNet, and walking past stormtroopers to make them flinch.

When they finally landed on Dantooine the stormtroopers trotted out; Luke rather slouched out. The Imperial base was going to be set up among foothills and the low plateaus. One carefully-mapped out route allowed AT-ATs onto the plains where they would be most effective. Luke did not know yet where the Rebel base was and knew that he should, but it did not seem to matter.

He sat down against the dirt wall of a head-high plateau. He rested his arms on his knees and stared into the blue sky.

The troops efficiently set the base housing to the task of building itself. Vader remained inside the ship presumably shutting it down. Luke dully monitored him in the Force which always rested like a humming pool of water in the back of his mind. The life of Dantooine felt new and pleasant to that sense. Although Luke could not name them he knew of animals of the area which had fled the humans; medium-sized creatures with pack mentality, herbivores with wide wings, skittering lines of insects.

There were points of human effects on the planet too, towns, and epicenters of the Force. Both dark—gloomy, comfortably cold, spreading like a disease—and light—clear, almost frighteningly noble, like a clean breath of air in a room filled with smoke—occupied certain clear sites.

Luke wondered out into the afternoon. He returned much calmer and happier than he had been. His thoughts had cleared.

He walked around the mostly-complete Imperial base, looking for his quarters. Vader had not emerged from the personalized Lambda, and Luke wondered, illogically it seemed, whether the dark lord were fixing or upgrading it for his own enjoyment.

As Luke explored the currents of the Force in wary search for his father, danger twinged around him.

Despite his uncertain moral position, he was _not _going to stand around and wait for the base to come under attack. Young Luke ran to tell the first person he could find that the Rebels had taken the initiative and were coming this way.

**Darth Maul did **not allow himself to become accustomed to sleeping regularly. Darth Sidious had always urged him to subsist purely on his physical strength and the Force. Maul was used to uncertainty whether it came from the ground beneath his feet or from the one person he called ally. Sleep equaled breach of security.

Therefore had a lot of time on the voyage to Dantooine, and boredom festered as he occupied himself with training.

He fell into sleep unexpectedly at times.

He had no clear goal for what he would do on Dantooine. Try to retrieve Luke, he supposed, perhaps even weaseling some useful information from Vader in the process. Whatever the political situation—read 'war'—happening there he could work with it or work with it. His goal remained the defeat of Palpatine, not for governments but for personal, vicious revenge.

Maul had researched the word which Sidious had seemingly hardwired into his mental processes. _Karash _was not from the Sith language. It was from that of the Iridonian Zabraks.

While the Skywalkers argued with each other, Maul's ship sliced through hyperspace to catch up with them. While Luke wondered peacefully on Dantooine, Maul, like the Rebels, finalized his next course of action.

**Ten Rebels stood **on the plateau above Luke and the Imperial housing units. The breeze flung his cloak about his feet. The foremost of the Rebels, a distractingly beautiful brunette woman, pointed a large blaster at them. Behind her stood a man in a white shirt and brown vest; a Wookiee; and a Trandoshan wearing overalls, a commlink, thick wires, and a satellite dish slung over its shoulder. This one backed into the group of six others, all of whom were uniformed in green camouflage more suited for a forest environment.

The stormtroopers around Luke who had gotten ready fast enough aimed their blasters.

"We do not wish to fight," said the woman in a high, commanding voice. "This planet is beautiful. It should not be damaged at all. We will leave peacefully –"

The stormtrooper with a cloth of rank attacked to his shoulder armor interrupted. "So that you can sneak up on us in the night? Right." He pointed with two fingers; the troopers opened fire.

The Rebels atop the low plateau ran out of the line of fire. Before the Imperials could move to follow them two X-Wings fell soaring out of the sky with sonic booms in their wake. Blasterfire ripped through the unoccupied prefab buildings.

The lead stormtrooper frantically signaled to his men to circle the plateau, finding the Rebel band and seeking cover from the starships. Darth Vader emerged from the Lambda and as his hands indicated a sweep across the sky one of the X-Wings approached the ground and crashed onto its side at the base of a hill. Smoke mushroomed. A powerful, frightened anger had empowered such a use of the Force, and as the stormtrooper cadre came back around the plateau, routed by the Rebels, Luke chose that fight instead of his father.

As the initial momentum of the attack faded both sides' foot soldiers spread out among the broken landscape and banyan-like trees.

Luke ducked and rolled calmly beneath blasterbolts, almost forgetting his lightsaber until it bumped against his leg as he ran. He did not know for which side he wanted to fight. It was more personal than that. In front of him as he moved the Trandoshan Rebel shot a stormtrooper almost point-blank. With his dying fall the trooper stabbed it through the chest. Both fell and Luke touched the reptilian alien's ridged head with his booted foot.

He was tired of conflict.

**Leia, Han, and **Chewie lay side-by-side on the top of the plateau, picking off stormtroopers. Leia's face was set tightly neutral; she did not enjoy the killing. However, powerful emotions were at work in her, protective emotions over the distant Rebel leaders, the aging Rebel base's equipment, and especially for Han and the Wookiee at her side. They had become a sort of family, even though Han had not wanted to stay at first except to flirt.

Blasters shrieked, footsteps pounded. The wind on the wings of the remaining aircraft rustled Leia's complex, braided hair and brought tears welling in her eyes.

The dead calm, the eye of the hurricane, was the cold acceptance in her conscious mind.

Chewie took out the last trooper immediately below them—and the ground beneath him collapsed. He slid a few feet in a jumble of dirt and rock. Han followed with concern. Leia brushed past him, leapt down the newly created slope, and readied her blaster. As Chewie shook off the dirt with Han's curt help an Imperial commander came around the corner hefting a repeater. Before he could fire Leia did, sending lasers whipping past Han and Chewie's heads, standing up and almost running into Han in her determination to be rid of the foe. Her aim was true, though, and the commander was removed from the equation. Han spoke to Leia as she crouched, breathing harshly, beside him. "I'm so glad you didn't let me die," he said, sarcasm in his voice.

"Me too," she said, quicker and with more emotion than she had counted on.

Chewie got up to shake off more dirt. Han did not have to move far to place his hand over Leia's and look into her eyes in the sudden calm moment.

"Don't do that," she said, her voice much softer than it had been. "My hands are dirty."

My hands are dirty too…"

Chewie peered into the nearby stand of trees, a shadowed battlefield made more so by the variegated terrain beyond it. His sense of smell, more acute than the humans', detected the disgusting tangs of burning and sweat. He growled. He could imagine swinging effortlessly through the trees like most Wookiees did, utilizing his claws, a thing he rarely had a chance to do on the worlds Han frequented. He would never act on such a fantasy of outpacing Han, the one to whom he owed his lifedebt. But he did so want to unleash Wookiee rage on the Imperials…

His keen eyes caught a figure in a black cloak running through the trees. _Vader!_ He barked his language's approximation of the hated name.

Han and Leia appeared beside him, identical calculating expressions plastered onto their faces.

They thought it very lucky that Chewie was not immensely good at interpreting human expressions.

**Luke **Force-pushed a Rebel and an Imperial away from one another, knocking both helmeted heads against the sides of the path between plateaus. Then he saw Vader's ship rise above the hills and fly away. Whether Vader wanted to flee or to retaliate he was leaving his troops behind, and Luke took steps toward him. _This is all the dark side gives you, _does _to you? It only makes you hurt, makes you betray yourself—_

The Force warned. Luke spun, igniting his lightsaber as he raised it over his head. He saw blurred images; the other lightsaber, Maul's snarling face—then his former master's hand was at his throat and Luke was slammed against a tree. He breathed in sharp pain.


	21. Chapter 21

XXI

Luke slashed in a wide, messy arc. Maul did leap away but a malicious hand of the Force remained at Luke's throat; then the Sith came close again, lightsabers striking together twice before Maul spoke.

"Traitor!"

Luke kept his weapon in a defensive pose, conceding nothing, but he tried to keep his voice calm. "The dark side is not my course." It comforted and reassured him to actually say it, to have decided. "I am sorry if I betrayed you. I was very confused."

"Choose." Maul barked. "Vader, or I, or the dead Jedi. Who is your master?"

Luke knew he was being asked whether or not he wanted a fight to the death. Maul's wide eyes fixated on him forced upon him either steely resolve or mindless fear. He did not want a fight—but that was because he had new resolve to eschew the dark side entirely. "The Jedi."

Maul bared his teeth in a silent scream and Force-pushed Luke into the wall of the plateu Pain jumped up the side of Luke's neck as he hit the wall and fell to the floor, barely getting his feet under him, then standing as if he carried a rock on his shoulders. He rolled away, breathing deeply, trying to keep his vision from growing red and chaotic, and took another basic stance at an angle to Darth Maul.

Luke knew that going head-to-head against his former master with lightsabers would not bode well for himself. There had to be another way to fight—even as Maul ran for him again Luke was thinking of what besides the weapon in his hand and the repertoire of Force powers, mostly dark, in his head he could possibly use against Maul. The Zabrak charged; Luke stepped aside and after half a jump kicked Maul under the arm. The Sith blocked the kick with an elbow, sending dull pain shooting through Luke's foot, and recovered with a lightsaber slash as wide and much less messy than Luke's first. It was followed with a neat series of spinning strikes which Luke blocked as he limped, shaking the funny-bone agony out of his foot as he grimaced. The tip of a red blade snaked past Luke's defense once and burned into the muscle of his shoulder just above the collarbone. Luke's fast footwork saved him; he backed up and, as the ground rose beneath him between a plateau and a tree, jumped straight up.

He wanted to scream when he landed, wanted to erase the pain with hatred, but he could not, even if he forgot why—momentarily he had an illustrative bird's-eye view of Darth Maul as he paced, staring upward, poised like a cat to leap many times its own height. Then Luke felt that he could view his life from above and outside, and see it as a play, where all lines of attack were drawn in red and blue, good and evil.

Weak and strong. Maul leapt up, a bird-angel of death, and Luke backed away again. Predictably Maul summoned the Force to restrain him but Luke knew it was going to happen, not entirely sure whether the Force or logic told him so. He took hold of the Force before the Sith could and jumped _over _his head, stabbing down as he did.

Maul ducked, but Luke was behind him now. Luke swept Maul's feet out from under him; like a gyroscope which was impossible to top over the Sith kept attacking, a dervish now, somersaults and weaving bladed hands. Luke angled to the wider plain of the plateau.

For a few moments they fenced, pure saber against saber, and Luke narrowly evaded a stab to his head. His shoulder twinged. He screamed and twisted his blade up under Maul's, scoring a glancing slash near where Luke's first hit, the kick, had also landed. Even with the fractional resistance of a lightsaber, though, the strike was too glancing and without enough power behind it to do more than surface damage. Maul's blade swept for Luke's legs; the human jumped, landed, faked a kick, caught the lower of the two red saber-blades with his own lightsaber and, before the cackling sound of field interactions began, cut at Maul's face.

Maul snapped the double lightsaber into a horizontal block, then spun the lower blade to Luke's outside. Luke ducked, and, entirely without thinking about it, generated a Force shield as the second blade came around when Maul pivoted into the strike.

The Force shield was not visible but the lightsaber ricocheted off the surprisingly strong concentration of energy around Luke. Another smash would break the amateur shield—but Luke took the opportunity he had created. He stabbed.

Faster than expected Maul blocked that strike and returned. Luke angled away, feinting a few strikes which were nowhere near in range, breathing harshly now. His very survival, though, gave him hope and pride—

Using the landscape to his advantage, Maul ripped the side of the plateau from its source. The ground collapsed underneath Luke. He began to slide downward, his footing lost and his legs tiring, straightening out of balanced, secure stances. With the earth he collapsed, freefall thrilling in his center.

He almost smiled as he lay, almost covered with dirt, eyes closed and breathing shallow. It seemed that gravity pulled heavier upon him now, so exhausted was he, more from the mental turmoil of the last weeks than from the certainly taxing battle of the last few minutes. He had lost his lightsaber sometime in the fall. Presumably it was under a different pile of dirt and rocks than he was. He had not been training long enough not sleeping enough; pure weariness overwhelmed him after all the jumping and fighting. He could not raise his head as Darth Maul casually jumped down to the grass in front of him.

As the Sith raised his lightsaber to kill his helpless former ally Luke heard a voice in his head.

_Trust the Force, Luke._

_You don't have to _use _it consciously. Trust it._

Luke remembered that he had forgotten to hope.

**Leia, Han, and **Chewie were not hiding behind a stand of trees. Most of the battle was over. The Rebels, joyous because of their rout of the pack of Imps, had nevertheless wisely returned to their base to secure it before mourning the dead. The trio, though, had been caught up in the battle of black-cloaked lightsaber-wielders, neither of whom was Darth Vader and one of whom was about to get stabbed to death.

Han's opinion on the situation came between Chewie's shivering and Leia's philanthropy which, he thought, had now officially cropped up at the Worst Possible Time. He had the fortunate timing to say, "No, we're not gonna go rescue the teenage dark wizard who'se getting the poodoo beat out of him…and talking to himself."

"I—"

Han yelped as his blaster flew out of his hand.

"**Obi-Wan…" murmured **Luke.

Without thinking Luke raised his left hand and the grip of a blaster slapped against his palm. He took the gun in both hands, flipped the setting to 'stun', pointed it at the Sith and pulled the trigger as many times in a row as he could. Pain flared through his shoulder.

It takes a lot of 'stun' shots to take down a Zabrak, and Darth Maul had trained beyond his natural capacity for bodily harm. At first, though, pure surprised and the numbing bolts reeled him. Then the facts that Luke kept shooting point-blank, that Han's blaster had been modified for exceptional power and efficiency, and that Maul was perpetually damaged from the battle at Naboo overwhelmed him together. He fell to his knees, conscious, if barely, but unable to move. The strange, implacable 'stun' shots left their distinctive pain running through him.

Luke struggled out from under the landslide and stood as Maul slumped against the plateau wall. Anger and shame beat out of him in the Force almost to the rhythm of Luke's own loud heartbeat.

The son of Skywalker pointed Han's blaster at Darth Maul and set it back to 'kill'. He poised there for a moment, thinking about the definition of strength and the so-called sides of the Force.

He turned away and walked into the wooded area. Inside his head the Force applauded, impersonal and now filled with light, beneath his numbed emotions.

He sensed the remaining Rebels and, finding them and bowing politely to the beautiful woman, handed the blaster to the angry, unarmed one.

Then he could no longer hold his eyes open or his legs securely underneath him. He heard the woman's commanding voice speaking about pity, malice, and 'a really good feeling about this'. He could not fall asleep, even though his thoughts felt fuzzy and the hard ground he sat on felt very comfortable. He had to speak to the rebels, and drop the intimidating mien he had cultivated in favor of a much more innocent and vulnerable one.

His real one?

Not anymore.

The Force through Obi-Wan said to him, _You will find the last Jedi on the planet Dagobah._

_---)-----------_

_A/N: The way I write Maul, it's so hard to kill or damage him it's almost annoying! Heh…it seems that the reviewers have been feeling more strongly for him than they have for Luke. Why is that? Must be subconscious…This is the penultimate chapter. I hope you've enjoyed it. _


	22. Chapter 22

XXII

Darth Maul had not been raised with the concept of failure. He would not call his inability to kill Darth Sidious and Darth Vader, or convert or kill Luke Skywalker, failure. He thought of them as proofs of his own uselessness. He was a broken machine, to be thrown in the scrap heap of history.

He had moved his ship, but not off of Dantooine. The place he had ended landing in was probably an ancient bastion of the dark side, but he did not care.

He remembered the word which Sidious has spoken in Zabrak which had tripped a more-than-instinct switch in his head. How deeply was that engrained? Where there more, other words that commanded him?

He researched a few more words, and then sat down in his quiet, dark ship. He spoke clearly in the language of his birth, which he had never learned fluently.

"_Die_," said Darth Maul.

_(four months later)_

**Dew dappled the **leaves on Dagobah. Luke could see it closely, as he was standing on his hands as Yoda watched him from a low, safe tree branch.

He had formed many new alliances since Dantooine. After telling his truthful tale of darkside coercion and change of heart, the Rebels tentatively took him in. Princess Leia kept looking at him funny but she became his most outspoken supporter—whatever that meant for her relationship with the ex-smuggler Captain Han Solo. He preferred to refer to Luke as 'kid', almost older-brotherly, once he got over thinking Luke was a creepy little Vader clone.

At first they had simply respected each other's types of power, but an easy trust developed from a simple camaraderie especially between the three of them. Luke could drop his impressive demeanor there. He was amazed again.

When the time was right, in the Force and in their social lives, Luke told the other of Obi-Wan Kenobi's direction to go to Dagobah.

Even Han had not heard of the place.

Luke was now almost comfortable upside down on his hands; he could think clearly in the pose for a decent length of time.

Then his commlink buzzed. He neatly dropped from the handstand. "Master, do you—"

"Go," said Yoda.

The buzz meant that a message had come from the interspatial comm in Luke's X-Wing. He had crashed his prized Rebellion starfighter into a pond upon his first arrival on Dagobah, but with Yoda had gotten it out again. The comm still worked; because of the external receiver, though, the incoming transmission disguised Princess Leia's words with static and garbling.

"Boba Fett, this bounty hunter, caught up to Han. He's being taken to Jaba the Hutt…I need to meet you on Tatooine. Please contact me."

Luke knew of Jabba the Hutt. His guardians had not had dealings with the crime lord, but he knew that some farmers and more people and families of other professions did. Jabba could control the economy of the local area to a credit if he wanted to. Luke looked up from his musings over the commlink. Yoda was standing on the leaf-strewn ground beside the ship.

"Decide you must," said the little Jedi Master happily, lightening his serious words by waving his gimer stick about like a baton, "how best to serve the galaxy."

"I will come back," Luke promised..

He gathered his things and climbed to the cockpit of his small ship. It lifted off slowly; he was mindful of the plants and animals swaying around him. The silver ship emerged like a star from the globe of Dagobah, shooting back out into ebony space.

Luke thought of the future.

---)----------

_Here ends 'Convergence'. It can be presumed that, with few exceptions, after this point the history of the galaxy is no longer AU, but follows the storyline of 'Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. _


End file.
